Corporations Behaving badly
The judicial system has become a partisan tool of corporations and repugicans to impose theocratic law on women …
A corporation is a separate legal entity that is incorporated through
either a legislative or registration process, and they have legal rights
and liabilities that are distinct from their employees and
shareholders. As separate legal entities, corporations have detached
accountability and are legally separated from their individual owner or
shareholders for tax purposes and to serve as protection from liability
issues if, for example, a defective product caused injury or death to
consumers. American corporations have amassed inordinate power over the
United States government’s judiciary, and although they are legally
separated from their owners for tax and liability reasons, some
corporate owners are using them to force their employees to adhere to
their religious convictions. Over the past year, private secular
corporations’ owners have sought judicial relief to ignore a mandate in
the new health law to provide contraception coverage in their company’s
health insurance prescription plans and appealed the courts to ignore
their corporation’s detached accountability and legal separation to
withhold medicine from their female employees.
Three weeks ago a three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia
ruled against mennonites (christians) who own Conestoga Wood Specialties Corporation and found that “
for-profit, secular corporations cannot engage in religious exercise.”
The mennonites refused to accept the panel’s ruling and appealed to the
full Federal Appeals Court that announced it will not disturb the
prior decision
upholding the rules ensuring that most employer-provided health plans
will have to cover prescriptions whether the mennonites’ religion
forbids them or not. The judge writing for the original 3rd Circuit’s
majority, Judge Robert Cowen, said that although there was “
a long history of protecting corporations’ rights to free speech,” there was no history of protecting a company’s free exercise of religion. “
We
simply cannot understand how a for-profit, secular corporation can
exercise religion. A holding to the contrary … would eviscerate the
fundamental principle that a corporation is a legally distinct entity from its owners.”
About
two months ago, secular corporation, Hobby Lobby, appealed to the 10th
Circuit Court for a ruling that eviscerated the fundamental principle
that a corporation is legally distinct from its owners and can exercise
its version of religious freedom to deny contraception coverage to its
employees. The court
ruled
that Hobby Lobby the corporation did have religious freedom rights to
control which prescription medicine its female employees were allowed to
use, and in fact said the Obama Administration offended the
corporation’s (a legal entity distinct from its owners) religious
beliefs that it could impose its religion on its employees. The idea
that anyone in America has the right to force another citizen to follow
their religious beliefs is bad enough, but that a legal entity has
religious beliefs and freedoms is beyond the pale. However, this is 2013
and repugicans have determined that the Constitution’s Separation
Clause is null and void and that corporations, especially those owned by
religious lunatics, have rights over and above American citizens;
especially if they are women.
The absurdity of a legal entity
having religious liberty, or convictions, to force its employees to
adhere to its beliefs aside, the recent Circuit Court decisions raise
another more troubling issue; judicial activism and political
partisanship. In the 3rd Circuit’s full panel of 12 judges’ decision,
all but one of the repugicans on the bench ruled in favor of the mennonites (christians) that followed repugicans’ newfound belief that
America is a theocracy. In 2004, a California Supreme Court decision
ruled that religious employers must comply with the law in a similar
case involving birth control and repugicans on the bench
agreed
that a business cannot impose its (non-existent) religious convictions
on its employees. However, since wingnuts in the judicial system
are bound to the whims of the repugican cabal and their opposition to
the President, they have little choice but following the repugican cabal’s dictates
that the contraception mandate cannot stand; especially when a
corporation is involved and particularly if they are oriented toward insane christianity.
The
latest decision to let the 3rd Circuit’s three-judge ruling stand means
the Supreme Court will surely decide whether the long-standing
fundamental principle that a corporation is a distinct entity separate
from its owners will remain a fundamental principal or not. A sure
indication the High Court will hear the case is when there is a conflict
between two federal circuit courts, the Supreme Court will decide which
is right. The inherent danger is that since the wingnuts on the
High Court are bound by the Koch brothers to rule according to repugican and corporate edicts, it is likely America will take another
step closer toward theocracy.
Women and their so-called
constitutional right to decide, with their doctors, their own
reproductive health have three powerful foes to contend with; activist
judges, repugicans, and religious lunatics determined to deny them the
right to use contraceptives. In the 3rd and 10th Circuit cases, Hobby
Lobby’s owner and the mennonites determined that hormonal birth control
is an
abortifacient
that induce miscarriages in spite of overwhelming medical science that
they prevent conception. However, since religious extremists have
concluded that their religious belief nullifies biological science with repugicans’ blessings, there is a near-certainty the wingnuts on
the Supreme Court will reject science and dutifully embrace precisely
what repugicans and corporations demand and rule for theocracy.
America
as a democracy, and a nation of laws, is in jeopardy if a fundamental
principle that a corporation is distinct from its owners applies for tax
and liability protections but not for the bizarre notion that a legal
entity has religious freedom to force its employees to adhere to their
bastardized version of American christianity. What is more troubling
though, is that the judicial system has become a partisan tool of
corporations and repugicans to impose theocratic law on women, and it
is likely borne of the conservative fixation on islamic sharia law. Like
any fixation, the afflicted begin taking on their source of obsession’s
characteristics and with corporations and the judicial system as their
source of power, repugicans are bound to succeed and usher in a
corporate theocracy with ease.
A middle school teacher was arrested Wednesday on
suspicion of possession of methamphetamine, possession of marijuana and
being under the influence of a stimulant, according to police.
